by SondraJones

Saints or Sinners?

The Evolving Perceptions ofMormon—Indian Relations

In Utah Historiography

By SondraThey Jones were the “battle ax of the Lord,11 and as Johnston’s Army approached Utah in 1857 Brigham Young would admonish leaders of his southern Indian missions to obtain the "love and com fidence” of the Indians through “works of righteous¬ ness” because they either had to “help us, or the United States [would] kill us both*”1 Most Indians in Utah Territory had early made a distinction between the two warring tribes ofwhite men: the more friendly "Mormonees” and the often deceptive and abusive

American “Mericats*”2 Ultimately, these Indians would become pawns in a power struggle between Mormon leadership and American officials in the Utah Territory—with the Mormons, and Brigham Young in particu¬ lar, at first the clear winners in the con¬ test for influence with the Indians. But there was another, much darker side to the relationship, fas] peaceful re¬ lations exploded into several bloody uprisings, two decades ofintermittent hostilities, and the ultimate removal ofmost Indians from around central Utah settlements and away from Mormon influence* The Mormon dream of redeeming and civiliz¬ ing the Indians had foundered in disease, displacement, starvation, warfare, and death. Reflecting an emerging national interest in the Indian-as-victim, a new generation ofUtah historians began to emphasize the tension and conflict that had existed alongside the proselyting and gift-giving of the Mormons, preferring to highlight the failures of Mormon-Indian rela¬ tions rather than their successes. From vilifying Indians and sanctify¬ ing Mormons, the new historians quickly began to excoriate Mormons instead.3 It has taken over three decades for the pendulum of histor¬ ical opinion to swing back to a more neutral stance in describing Mormon Indian relations.

By the end of the twentieth century revisionist historians had drawn a grim picture of the failure of Mormon idealism—or its blatant hypocrisy. They had found that, . . the ideal of Indian redemp¬ tion had been overshadowed by the realities of a deliberate and calculated usurpa¬ tion of Indian lands, creating a pattern of conquest, exploitation, and oppression that was simply a repetition of wrhiteIndian relations elsewhere in the country.

No historian can escape the influence of their own perspectives, including this writer; however, after thirty years of being pulled through the interpretive tides ofrevi¬ sionist opinions about Mormon-Indian relations, I would argue that, while spattered with injustice and abuse, the pattern of Mormon-Indian relations still differed to a significant degree from Indian relations else¬ where on the American frontiers, particu¬ larly during the first two decades ofthe twentieth century.^

Dean May wrote in 1987 that although Mormons “shared the widespread animosity ofmost frontiersmen to¬ wards the Indians, . . . their disposition was tempered by [their] singular teachings and beliefs” and they made “ex¬ traordinary efforts to befriend and convert the Indians,”

Brigham Young was troubled that his settlements were displacing Indians, but because the establishment of his Mormon kingdom was his first priority, he could not aban¬ don his rapid colonization efforts.5 Neither would— or could—he compensate the Indians for the land his settlements were taking. He did, however, urge federal intervention with its treaties and annuities, encouraged vocational retraining on Indian farms or individual em¬ ployment, and urged members to be generous in giving handouts to the Indians. Whether this was to “get the Indians out of his hair,” underhandedly manipulate them into not fighting, or a purely Christian altruism will for¬ ever remain in the interpretive eye ofthe beholder. But his policy of “assistance not resistance” did set the tone for Mormon-Indian relations and did result in a relatively milder response to the inevitable Indian-white conflict.6

When Brigham Young brought the persecuted and harried Saints to Utah it was with the grim determination not to be moved again, and he admitted that he had been “prepared to meet all the Indians in these mountains, and kill every soul of them if we had been obliged so to do”;7 but most evidence suggests that killing Indians was not his first option, even during the violence of 1849-185L Religious fervor aside, Brigham Young's Indian policy was a pragmatic one—it really did cost more in money, lives,

and labor lost to fight an Indian war; far better to placate, conciliate, and make friends with Indians than to fight them. Peace was essential to Young's grandiose plans for colonization. To claim the terri¬ tory, he planned to fling small settlements to distant parts where they would be Kanosh, chief of the highly vulnerable to attack and would be linked by long stretches of equally vul¬ nerable roads. When fragile relations between settlers and Indians broke down, Pahvant Utes, colonizing and other projects had to be abandoned or delayed. And converting said Brigham Young did Indians to Mortnonism and farming was obviously more difficult when they were not talk two ways and killing each other. But hostilities were the exception. There deceive them as Washington is ample evidence to show that despite the officials did. intermittent (and occasionally bloody) conflict, an extraordinarily benign, symbi¬ otic relationship did exist during the first years of Mormon-Indian contact, and as Peterson notes, the Utah Indian wars were generally fought between friends and acquaintances,8 Indians were freely proselyted, hundreds of Paiute and Gosiute children were adopted into Mormon homes, and there was some intermarriage. Indians camped near major settlements, usually moved freely within and around them, were well known and often friends; they traded fish or game for food, exchanged captive children for arms and livestock, ate at Mormon ta¬ bles, and occasionally worked for farmers or simply begged (or demanded) handouts—which they usually received. In spite of occasional fallings out, most negotiating chiefs listened to Brigham Young as the “good father ofthe Indians” whose word they trusted, who did not “get mad when he hears of his brothers and friends being Killed, as the California [militia] Captains do.” Kanosh said Brigham Young did not talk two ways and deceive them as Washington officials did.9 Wakara called Brigham Young “a very good man” whom he “loved,” while chiefs at the Spanish Fork peace council refused to sign their treaty until Brigham Young approved it.10 Even Black Hawk turned to Young as a source ofpuwd-im medicine power in his final years, and the tattered remnants of Sagwitch's Shoshone eventually placed themselves in the hands of the. church in order to survive,11 But Mormon settlers and Utah Indians were starcrossed neighbors. Simply by moving into and establishing resource-intensive settlements on Indian land Mormons cast themselves into the role of villain. Regardless ofwellmeaning intentions or moral imperatives to convert, befriend, and “rehabilitate” Indians, as Mormons contin-

ued to pursue their aggressive colonization efforts into every productive corner, resources disappeared and desti¬ tute Indians had to turn to (or against) Mormon settlers to survive.12 . . , While many Indian men viewed fanning as women's work, Mormons viewed [these Indians] as indo¬ lent. And as Mormons prospered, Indians died. With mounting tensions, the disintegration of relations was inevitable*13

Yet, few of Utah's Indians actually went to war, for these Great Basin natives were not a war-oriented people.14 Warfare was “practically non-existent” among the Gosiute, Paiute, and Western Shoshone until revenge for abuse and starvation impelled them to “steal or starve*"15 The Northwestern Shoshone became more ag¬ gressive only after they grew destitute or responded to abuse from emigrants; and despite the existence of several prominent commercial raiding bands, the majority of the Western Ute avoided conflict.16 Less than a hundred Timpanogos Utes were involved in the brief Provo rebel¬ lion of 1850, relatively few kinsmen of Arapeen and Wyonah perpetuated the “Walker” War, and at its height fewer than several hundred Indians—and not all of them Ute—were ever involved in the Black Hawk War at any one time* Though ill feelings and killings on both sides eventually drove non-combatant Ute into the hills or onto the new (and unprepared) reservation, and many un¬ doubtedly rooted for the raider and may have benefited from his plunder, only a minority of them actually joined Black Hawk’s opportunistic raiders and cattle-rustlers*17

Benevolence could stretch only so far, and as Madsen noted, demands for food by hungry Indians “rapidly ex¬ ceeded the willingness and resources” of the Mormon settlers to provide* As stock also continued to disappear, patience grew thin*19

And Brigham Young's policy of defense and concilia¬ tion was a difficult one to follow* Rank and file members resented the time and effort it took to build defensive forts or consolidate herds.

But many church members did not revert to rebellion or savagery, even in the midst of the war. Many southern Utah Saints dutifully tore dowrn their settlements and con¬ solidated at Parowan and Cedar City during the Walker War, while hundreds of their cattle were driven to an un¬ certain fate in Salt Lake City. Many were like Benjamin Johnson of Santaquin, or Dudley Leavitt and Jacob Hamblin, who were willing to defend Indian friends—or prisoners—to the death* Hamilton Kearns’s unfailing friend¬ ship with the Indians bought his son respectful treatment from Black Hawk's raiders, Thomas Callister remained an unflagging defender of the Pahvant, and some had their cattle passed over or returned as a sign offriendship* Even in the midst of rising hostilities some friendships endured, or like the Cache Valley Mormons, still supplied food to Indian bands (Col. Connor destroyed stores of Mormongifted grain following the Bear River massacre).19 And as their initial anger with Mormons faded, it was to the Mormons the Northwestern Shoshone turned for help.

While much Mormon charity was purely defensive (feed rather than tight), not all was. Cache Valley bishops continued to feed the decimated Northwestern Shoshone long after they ceased to be a threat, and travelers in the 1870s still described Pahvants and Paiutes entertained at kitchen tables or given supplies from bishops' storehouses. Mormon missionaries and advocates, continued to prose¬ lyte and work with Gosiute, Shoshone, and Ute farmers*20

A harried Brigham Young explored a variety of solu¬ tions to Mormon-Indian conflict. But despite mistakes, his overriding policy remained that ofseeking peaceful so¬ lutions and proposing amnesty for combatants on both sides.21 So, while some Indians were arrested and summar¬ ily executed during hostilities, in the wake of a negotiated peace, no chiefs were ever imprisoned or executed for their “war crimes” as leaders of Indian uprisings else¬ where frequently were,22 Mormons even earned the ire of the nation when they wrent out of their way to protect the Pahvant perpetrators of the Gunnison massacre*23

There were wars, hostilities did flare, and the bitter¬ ness of dispossession—violent or otherwise—remained* However, Mormon-Indian relations had, and in some cases continued, to differ from the frontier norm. We can¬ not completely dismiss as delusion and myth the percep¬ tions ofso many contemporary spokesmen from history—Mormon, Gentile, and Indian—that the Mormons were different from most Americans and that for the most part their relations with the Indians item noticeably different from their gentile contemporaries* And even if the differ¬ ence was only in a matter of degree, that degree was sig¬ nificant and preserved most of Utah’s Indians from the wanton wars of extermination and deliberate political dis¬ possession that shredded Indian peoples elsewrhere,24

Sinners mingled with saints in frontier Mormon settlements. And while the past four decades ofrevisionist history has added invaluable detail and insight into our understanding ofUtah history, and despite learning ofthe “appalling blood-lettings” and occasional fury of which the all-too-human Latter-day Saints were capable, the overall pattern of early Mormon-Indian relations still re¬ mains one in which Indians sized up a stranger by asking, “Is this man a Mormon, or an American?” and drew strong lines of demarcation between the two in favor of the Mormons*25

Excerpts from Sandra Janes, "Saints or Sinners? The Evolving Perceptions of Mormon-Indian Relations In Utah Historiography ” Utah Historical Quarterly, vol 72, no. I (Winter 2004): 19^6.

1 Thomas D. Brown, May 19, 1854, inJuamfa Brooks, ed., Journal of the Southern Indian Mission (Logan; Utah State Umc, Press, 1972), 25; and. Brigham Young toJacob Ham&lin, Aug. 4t 1857, letter booh no. 3, 737-38, LDS Church Archives. 2 Not all Mormons were benevolent, and not a/I Gentiles were abusive, but in genera/ a significant enough difference existed that Indians drew a sharp dis¬ tinction between the two. Madsen, among others, details non-Mormon abuses against Shoshone (“Calloused frontiersmen with little regard for Indians” and 'Yuthiess, brutal, and indiscriminate killing'') versus friendlier Mormons- who had to placate Indians for survival. See Brigham D. Madsen, The Shoshoni Frontier and the Bear River Massacre (Sait Lake City: Univ, ofUtah Press, 1985), 25-28, passim. 3 Ronald Walker complained that this only created a new set ofstereotyped he¬ roes and villains, "Towarda Reconstruction ofMormon and. Indian Relations, 1847-1877BYU Studies 29 (Fall 1989): 27. 4 My historical genesis occurred during the revisionist era of the 1970s; as a descendant of Mormon pioneers but the wife of a Native American who has never cared to celebrate “pioneer day,” it has been an interesting intellectual development. 5 See for example, Plow'd A. O'Neil and Stanford Lawton, “Of Pride and Politics: Brigham Young as Indian Superintendent," Utah Historical Quarterly 46 (Summer 1978): 237, 242-43; also John H. Peterson, Utah’s Black Hawk War (Salt Lake City: Unit?, of Utah Press, 1998), 390, and Madsen, 49-50, 85. 6 Robert McPherson, "Setting the Stage: Native America Revisited,” in Forrest Cuch, ed., A History of Utah’s American Indians (Salt Lake City: Utah State Division of Indian Affairs and Utah State Division of History, 2000), 20. 7 Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 1:105, 8 Peterson., Black Hawk War, 6-7. 9 Tabby, through interpreter George W. Bean to Brigham Young, May 19, 1865, Brigham Young Collection, and “Proceedings of a. Council with the Utah Indians’1 (at Spanish Fork farm, June 1865, as cited in Peterson, Black Hawk War, 148 nn. 44, 151 (Tabby) and 80 (Kanosh). 10 Samuel N. Carvalho, Incidents of Travel and Adventure in the Far West with Colonel Fremont’s Last Expedition (New York; Derby & Jackson, 1860), J93. 11 Peterson, Black Hawk War, 352-56; Scott R, Christensen, Sagwitch: Shoshone Chieftain, Mormon Elder, 1822-1884 (M.A. Thesis, Utah State Univ., 1995); Parry, “Northwestern Shoshone ” in Cuch, 44-58. 12 Historians /ike McPherson, Madsen, and Holt all emphasise the previously underestimated devastation wrought on traditional food-gathering cycles when Mormon settlers and non-Mormon emigrants appropriated or destroyed re¬ sources. See Madsen, Shoshoni Frontier; Ronald L. Holt, Beneath These Red Cliffs; An Ethnohistory of the Utah Paiutes (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico, 1992); cf. "Beneath These Red Cliffs: The Utah Paiutes and Paternalistic Dependency” (Ph.D. di'ss., Univ. of Utah, 1987), and Robert McPherson, “Paiute Posey and the Last White Uprising,” Utah Historical Quarterly 53 (Summer 1985): 249-51, 264; “Indians, Anglos and Ungulates: Resource Competition on the San Juan," in The Northern Navajo Frontier 1860-1900 (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1988); and A History ofSanJuan County; In the Palm ofTune (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1995), 145-51. 13 Small-scale agriculture was practiced by some Utah groups before Mormon/Federal intervention, but mounted Utes seemed to be particularly dis¬ dainful of it. In J873 White River Utes laughed as farming Uimahs, called them women, and claimed the work was the responsibility of the white agency employees. See J. J. Critchlow to Commissioner F. A. Walker, Sept. 1, 1872, Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1872 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1872), 292. 14 The "war ethic13 was not developed among the Ute or other Basin Indians, although raiding-for-profit increased with the introduction of traders and Europeans goods. See Marvin K. Opler, "The Southern Ute ofColorado,” in Acculturation in Seven American Indian Tribes, Ralph Linton, ed. (New York: Harper & Son, 1940), 123, 162-^63. 15 Madsen, passim; VirginiaC, Trenholm and Maurine Carley, The Shoshonis, SentenieLs of the Rockies (Norman; Univ. ofOklahoma Press, 1964), 4.

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